Bavarian police arrest suspected spies

Police in Bavaria arrested two suspected spies earlier this month, authorities announced Thursday.

Prosecutors in Munich said the two men were arrested on April 12 during a routine check on the A6 Autobahn near the small town of Neuendettelsau, just outside Nuremberg.

A 45-year-old man from Latvia and a 43-year-old man from Ukraine reportedly had “various suspicious items” in their vehicle, including false identification cards, cameras, a drone, GPS trackers and radios, as well as several mobile phones and SIM cards.

The men are suspected of “acting on behalf of a group or entity outside Germany,” authorities said, accusing them of espionage activities aimed at subversion and the procurement of false documents.

Neither man is a resident of Germany, and both are in pre-trial detention.

Latvia and Ukraine are both home to Russian-speaking minorities, some of whom are sympathetic to Russia. The alleged need to protect Russian-speakers in Ukraine from “oppression” is regularly repeated by Kremlin spokespeople as a justification for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Independent reports by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Council of Europe and others have consistently found no evidence that Russian speakers or ethnic Russians in Ukraine have faced “persecution” at the hands of Ukrainian authorities.

The first passengers arrived at Frankfurt Airport’s new Terminal 3 on Thursday, following the official inauguration of the building a day earlier.

The first plane to land early in the morning was a China Southern Airlines flight from Shenyang.

The Chinese airline is one of 57 set to move its Frankfurt operations from Terminal 2 to Terminal 3, which is to be closed and renovated.

The new Terminal 3, which came in slightly over budget at €4 billion and was only slightly delayed (mainly due to the COVID-19 pandemic) after 10 years of construction, has the capacity to handle approximately 19 million passengers per year – with the potential to expand to 25 million.

Former US President Barack Obama has praised German climate activist Luisa Neubauer for her “incredible” work in raising awareness about climate change.

Obama said the 30-year-old, who participated in the Obama Foundation Leaders Program in 2020, is an example of a young person who gives him “hope.”

In a video message recorded on April 22 to mark Earth Day, Obama said that Neubauer was someone who “decided not to wait for someone else to make change” but who took action and made an impact on his own.

Neubauer, one of the main organizers of the Fridays for Future climate protection movement in Germany, is then seen on a boat near Antarctica, which she describes as “a place of hope”.

He said that the fact that Antarctica is the only continent protected by a cooperative international treaty is “quite fantastical” in today’s world.

Police removed a man from a deportation flight at Berlin Brandenburg Airport on Thursday after he allegedly disrupted pre-flight preparations.

According to the dpa news agency, the deportee began becoming loud and uncooperative in the back rows of the A320 airplane and had to be removed from the flight.

During efforts to remove it, an emergency slide was reportedly deployed, forcing all 161 passengers to leave the plane for safety reasons.

Since the emergency slide could not be replaced immediately, the flight’s capacity had to be reduced from 51 to 110 and ultimately the flight to Vienna was delayed by two and a half hours.

Last year, 1,593 deportations were stopped due to federal police intervention for various reasons, including medical emergencies, resistance, staff shortages, missing documents or self-harm.

A total of 22,787 people were deported from Germany in 2025, 19,987 by air.

Good day! Welcome to DW’s coverage of what Germany is talking about on Thursday, April 23, 2026.

The first passengers began passing through Frankfurt Airport’s new Terminal 3 on Thursday morning, following the official opening of the terminal on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, at the Berlin airport, a disruptive passenger had to be removed from a deportation flight.

Elsewhere, former US President Barack Obama has praised German climate activist Luisa Neubauer.